The radio bandwidth allocated to a mobile radio network is limited. In a mobile radio network, the number of ongoing calls and/or data transfer sessions and the rate by which bits are transferred in the ongoing calls/data transfer sessions are limited by the radio bandwidth that has been allocated to the mobile radio network. Since radio bandwidth is a scarce resource, there is a need for utilizing the bandwidth allocated to a mobile radio network as efficiently as possible.
In a mobile radio network operating according to the principles of CDMA, the maximum transmission capacity available in the network is tightly coupled to the amount of interference in the air interface. By keeping the transmission power of a session low, the interference experienced by other sessions will be low, and the impact of the session on the maximum available transmission capacity will be limited.
In E. Altman, “Capacity of Multi-Service Cellular Networks with Transmission-Rate Control: A Queuing Analysis”, ACM Mobicom '02, Atlanta, Ga., Sep. 23-28, 2002, it is shown that by reducing the transmission rate of all best effort sessions in a CDMA network by a slowdown rate a, the capacity of the network increases, despite the fact that a slower transmission rate implies a longer holding time for each session (assuming that the same amount of information is transferred regardless of transmission rate).